Actual knitting!

First of all - if you have not voted for the Dye for Glory contest, please take a moment and go HERE to vote. Voting ends tomorrow! You can see our color entries HERE. I am caught up on all the Dye for Glory pre-orders (for now!) and shipments will be going out this morning.

In other news - the February Lady Sweater is off the needles!!! Well, for a short time anyway. I finished the body of the sweater last night and now I am moving on to the sleeves. I wanted to do the sleeves with DPNs but I didn't have any in the correct size (can you imagine?!?!?!) so I ordered some from Knit Picks. As soon as they get here I'll be picking up stitches and moving along.



The yarn is Knit Witch DK weight in colorway Aphrodite (two different lot numbers obviously). I'll probably overdye it once it is finished just to even out the coloration a little.

WARNING!! Snake picture ahead!!

Wayne found this super cute little guy living under some cardboard. I love him! He is adorable.


Wayne has been working on a super big project lately that I can show you some pictures of next week I hope. Here's a "teaser". I'll let you take some guesses at what he is doing.

Note to my mom and dad - no fair spoiling the surprise in the comments!!!


Have a great weekend everyone!!!!

Can you smell this??

Do you know what this is?





That is cilantro that I pulled from the garden the other day. To be more exact - it is SIXTEEN POUNDS of cilantro that I pulled from the garden. I tell ya, I have never seen so much cilantro in my life!

We LOVE cilantro and I learned how to preserve it. You just go through it and cut it into useable pieces (get rid of all the tough stems, bad leaves, roots, etc), wash it, mix it with just a little bit of oil (just enough to coat it lightly), place it in freezer bags and freeze it. It sounds like a really simple process but when you are doing 16 pounds of it - it takes a while! I am almost done though. When you preserve it like this you just go to the freezer and take out however much you need. The oil on the leaves just makes it easy to separate the amount you need even though it is frozen. You have to use it right away though - don't let it sit around on the counter and linger - take it out and use it in your meal right then. I am so excited to have fresh cilantro all through the winter now! Woo hoo!!

Oh, and the main reason I am posting this information and the pictures should be stated. If you are expecting yarn from me this week or early next week (and there are a lot of you out there), your yarn may very well smell like cilantro. So sorry about that........I can think of a lot worse things it could smell like though!! :)

That's just a joke. I don't think the yarn will REALLY smell like cilantro but just in case........

I may actually finish the body of the February Lady Sweater tonight! So, I could (theoretically of course - you understand) have a picture of some knitting tomorrow. Knitting that actually does not have needles in it!! Wow.

I am working my way through all of these orders for the Dye for Glory yarns. I think I may almost be caught up! I am hoping to have all the pending orders that I currently have out by Friday so you should be getting your yarns soon!!

Red Clover Tea

Anyone ever made this? I read about this on a gardening blog and then of course had to go out and promptly collect a bunch of red clover that we had growing in our yard. We brought it home, rinsed it off and put it in the food dehydrator. I haven't made any tea with it yet but I go through tea like crazy in the winter so I'm always up for having more tea around. I would be interested in hearing anyone's experiences with drying your own herbs for teas.

Speaking of drying herbs - we have been fortunate enough to be drying a BUNCH of parsley and basil. Thank goodness because I go through a ton of those two herbs! I have also frozen a bunch of cilantro, another one of my favorite herbs.

Luckily, to help with all of our canning and drying herb adventures we also made another purchase from our local book and wine shop - woo hoo!!!

Reasons I haven't been knitting

Reason #1

Reason #2

Reason #3

Reason #4

This is just a SMALL portion of the stuff we have been canning. Sadly, most of it has been from the farmer's market and not our own garden but I certainly am not going to complain about being able to buy freshly grown organic veggies walking distance from our house!! We have canned a BUNCH of green beans, corn, beets, pickles, squash, hot sauce, jams & jellies, tomato sauce and peppers. All the squash came out of our garden but I swear that stuf is so prolific I think it would grow on the moon!

Have you ever shucked freshly picked corn? If so, you are familiar with the corn worm. These are often present in the corn. When we started shucking the corn I was like "Wait! Let me get a bowl for the worms!". Really, I didn't think that would be a phrase I would have ever uttered. But, the fish love them!!!

A finshished object!

It may not be knitting but it IS a finished object - woo hooo!!!!!

Here's the before picture again for your viewing pleasure:

And here is our happily completed flagstone patio!!!

The only thing left on this project is the back deck. It still needs a railing and a couple coats of red paint. However, that will have to wait because we have a huge project coming up next week which requires our (read Wayne's) immediate attention. I'll save the pictures of that for next week! Mr. Man has truly outdone himself on this project.

So, what did you do over the weekend?

Time to Vote!!!!

The Sock Summit/Ravelry "Dye for Glory" contest has now progressed to the voting phase. Go HERE to vote. There are several categories and all of them have some gorgeous yarns. Here are the yarns that we have posted in the following categories:

Watercolors - "Waters of the Willammette"



Predictable Stripes - "Illumination"



Pooler - "Brewtopia"



Dipped - "Portland Rain"



Shaded Solid - "City of Roses"



Out of the Box - "Oregon Merlot"


If you have named one of these colors you are contractually bound to vote for it!! Haha - just kidding - vote for whoever you like but we will appreciate any Knit Witch votes. Thanks in advance!!!

Wacky Wednesday

Remember that Dr. Suess book? I loved that book.

The cats were playing in one of the trees the other day and I snapped some really cute pictures of them.

Missy.

Then of course Goose has to get in on the action. You know - monkey see monkey do.

Whoops!! That was a close one!

Cute, eh? I just happened to have my camera in my pocket when they were doing this. Unfortunately, I did NOT have my camera on our walk the other day when we saw about 7 hawks. We have never seen that many on our walk before and they were all out surveying the area. 3 of them were flying around together (persumably a mom and 2 babies as 2 of them were pretty small hawks) and they just kept flying in circles. I guess the were out for some kind of hunting lesson. It would have made a great photo and I was so sad to not have my camera on me!

Hot Tub Guest

We got into the hot tub the other day only to find that is was already occupied. Check out this little guy.

He has been hunkering down under the hot tub cover and staying nice and toasty warm. When we get in we cover him with a piece of wood so he isn't feeling too exposed. From previous posts, someone told me that this is a grey tree frog. I was watching him the other day while we were in the hot tub (it's not very often that you get to observe a frog up close and personal like) and I got a small shot of his underbelly. OMG!!! I couldn't believe it. I was actually shocked. I found this picture on the internet but I couldn't find one of the same kind of frog. The grey tree frog's underbelly was BRIGHT yellow and black. I'm showing you this picture just so you have an idea of the intensity of the color. You would never know it to look at him from the top. Hmmm.....maybe he would let us get a picture somehow.........

We found a mystery paw print in the sand that is still around the patio work site (which is almost completely done BTW - I'll have to get some pictures soon of the whole shebang). This is way too small to be Petey's print and way to big to belong to one of our cats. Fox maybe? Coyote? I know we have both of those around here. It looks more like a fox print to me. Thoughts from the blogosphere?

As Promised

I told you that I was going to take some pictures of our neighbor's insane garden. I finally remembered to do so. Check out these pictures (Mr. Man added for scale).

That stuff pouring over the edge is squash and the really tall stuff is corn and sunflowers. Is that not crazy looking?? This is her first year for a garden on this property too. Mushroom compost is the key here I'm thinking - amazing stuff. You can't even see her house anymore!

And - we bought some bass for the pond! 40 to be exact.

The larger bream were showing way too much interest in them so I am hoping that a bunch of them have not been eaten. They are really small so I'm sure it will be a while before we catch any of them swimming around. In my experience, bass aren't quite as friendly as bream or catfish. The bream are to the point now where they will follow us all the way around the pond when we walk around it!

Turtle Captures and Releases

We rescued a snapping turtle from the road last week. We figured he would be happier in the pond than in the road. He can join the other 1-2 snapping turtles that are already in there. If you ever encounter a snapping turtle - be sure to pick it up by the tail - those suckers will definitely bite you and could quite possibly remove a finger when they do so. The first one we found when we moved here was HUGE and he must have weighed about 50 pounds. This one was a good bit smaller than that.



This year the Red Eared Sliders that we bought last year were no where to be found. We figure they probably moved on during all of the pond work that we had done last year. Like I said, we still have about 3 snapping turtles in the pond though. But, we really like the sliders so we went and bought a couple. They are SO CUTE!!!

Wayne says they are box turtles because they came in a box. Not so.

Slim wanted to check them out too.

And then all the fish had to check them out too.

Tomorrow we are going to pick up 40 bass for our pond. The catfish we got a few months ago are already getting huge and those bass will be getting huge also. Fish fry anyone??

Have a great weekend!!

Knitting!

First of all - there are some new things on the Discount Page! There are a few new yarn bowls on there and I put the colors that were not chosen for the Dye for Glory contest up as well. I only have a couple of skeins of each of them but I can certainly dye more if we run out so if you want to order them and the system won't let you just email me and let me know. I'll add you to my ever growing Sock Summit Yarn dyeing list.

Again - not MY knitting. I came across Cristi's blog post the other day and thought she had SUCH a cute idea for her latest sock design project. You should all go check it out HERE and she has the pattern for sale on her post as well. I love the idea behind these socks and the story - so cute! Besides, Cristi is totally awesome so you should all buy her pattern anyway - just because she is a great person. I don't think she will mind if I steal one of the pictures and put it on my blog to pimp out her pattern. But seriously, you must go to the link and read her cute story about them!

Kefir Anyone?

OK - who out there knows a thing or two about Kefir? My husband is addicted to this thing online called "Free Cycle". There are two local groups here and it is basically a place for people to give away things that they no longer need. For instance, our neighbor had a stove that had been sitting in her barn since she moved in 3 years ago. It worked but it certainly looked a little worse for wear. She was going to send it to the dump. Wayne piped up and said not to do that because he would put it on free cycle and see if there were any takers. Luckily there was a taker and it just happened to be someone we knew (that's small town life for ya). This friend was really down on her luck and really NEEDED a stove. She had been cooking on a camping stove since she didn't have a real stove and oven. We loaded it up and took it out to her and she cleaned it up and it works great!!! I'm so glad to see that it went to a new home with someone who could use it instead of going to a landfill or something.

Anyway, back to Kefir. Someone here on the local free cycle offered up some of her Kefir grain and of course, Wayne jumped on the deal. Now, I spent some time in California and while I was there I drank A LOT of Kefir. I happen to really like the stuff and it is great for making smoothies. But, I really know nothing about it. Basically, as I understand it, Kefir is a culture that you put in milk and the culture makes really great pro-biotic additions to your diet. You use it to make smoothie type drinks and you can mix it with fresh fruit, honey, stevia, whatever you like really. It is a culture so you have to feed it and it grows. So, now we have this Kefir grain and really have no clue what to do with it. Wayne put it in about 2 cups of milk and left it at room temperature to culture. Any help/tips/advice/anything from the blog land would be most appreciated! Here's a picture of Kefir - this isn't our Kefir it is just a picture off of the internet. Our Kefir is buried in milk right now!



I was just talking to Wayne yesterday about how little I actually blog about knitting on this "Knitting Blog". Is that disturbing to anyone out there? You must enjoy the non-knitting or loosely reltated knitting stories though because you are all still reading!

I have been asked to speak at the Charlotte Knitting Guild in October - which should be LOADS of fun! I need to make some hotel reservations soon. I have been working on my speech for this event. I have been dyeing all of the Sock Summit yarn (thanks so much everyone for your pre-orders! I can't believe how much of this wonderful yarn we have already sold!). I have also been working on some new yarns and new surprises that will be coming up soon - some that we will be debuting at SAFF in October. Knit Witch has been extreemly busy lately and we are so grateful for that. We love all this Knit Witch busyness and some of our customers have been throwing out some GREAT ideas for us!

Lake Blue Ridge

OK - I'm back on track! Nathan and his girlfriend Tiana came to visit us over the weekend. We took them kayaking/canoeing on Lake Blue Ridge. It was a beautiful day so it was perfect for getting out and paddling around a little bit. We waited until Sunday afternoon as it had rained all Sunday morning so it was nice and quiet since all the weekenders were already on the road.

What else? I did A LOT of canning over the weekend. I'm pretty sick of squash and I know we have a lot more coming! I canned zuchinni, scallop squash, yellow squash and lots of green beans. That took half the day. I have a new pressure canner though and I love it! I can put a bunch of stuff into it at one time so that is really nice.

I'll be starting on all of the sock summit pre-orders today so that I can hopefully get those out next week for everyone who has already placed an order.

Seriously, I need to get back to work on the February Lady sweater!

I'm slack

OK - I know, I'm slack. I didn't get around to putting up my Monday post yesterday! Yesterday we spent the day kayaking on Lake Blue Ridge so I'll post some pictures of that for you tomorrow. In the meantime - here's some shop news:

If you are in one of our clubs - the July club shipments went out today! You should have your packages this week.

We have a new and improved newsletter sign up thingy on the website. Hopefully, this will work better than the method I have been using in the past. Now I just have to learn how to use it and get all 600 or so newsletter subscriber email addresses added into the new system.

The yarn for the sock summit all got shipped today! I am hoping to get the prize yarn out for the colorway naming contest out tomorrow - so if you are expecting prize yarn you will hopefully be getting it this week.

Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest

Anyone ever been there? It is really a beautiful place. Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest is in North Carolina and is one of the only virgin hardwood forests east of the Mississippi. The trees here are HUGE. We hadn't been there in a couple of years so we decided to take a ride there. It is about 1.5 hours from our house or so. Here are a few pictures.

The water there is amazing. It flows into the beautiful Santeetlah Lake.

We saw 3 different snakes - very unusual that we saw so many of them up close. They were all pretty darn big too. All of these are black rat snakes. Someone on the trail told us to be careful because there was a baby Copperhead right up the trail. Well, it was a millipede - close. Someone needs a little help with their snake identification.

Here's a picture of us with Petey and our neighbor Liz with Petey. Petey sure had a great time. I packed him a peanut butter sandwich - his favorite part of the trip!

I hope everyone has a great weekend! We'll be getting stuff packed up for the Sock Summit!!!

Did you notice?

Yeah, I totally forgot to blog yesterday! I have been so crazy getting this Sock Summit stuff ready to go that it just fell off the radar. Not to worry - you haven't missed much! Have I told you how bummed I am that we are not going to the Sock Summit??? I am really glad our yarn is getting to go but I WANT TO GO TOO!!!!!!! Wah! Hopefully Tina and Steph will be signing up for more torture and doing this again next year. If they do - we are so there. Thanks so much to everyone for their wonderful support of our Sock Summit yarn colors! We have sold a lot of the yarns already. I will let everyone know when voting is up and running.

Some time ago I promised you a picture of our neighbor's garden. This is sort of a bad picture and things are MUCH more huge now. I will have to try and remember to get a picture when we are over there again. This one was taken from our property and you can't really appreciate the hugeness of this crazy garden.

Here is another picture that we took on our Fourth of July day. This one was too good not to share. Check this out. A bottle opener on the front bumper of his car!

This reminded me of a funny story. Oh how I wish I had gotten pictures of this at the time. We were at my dad's farm one day and we were helping him get a couch moved to the apartment over his garage. Well, there was NO WAY we were going to get the couch up the narrow stairway to get it up into the apartment so we were wracking our brains trying to figure out how we might be able to do this. It just so happened that there was a porch balcony on the apartment (2 stories up of course).

One of my dad's friends, Mark, was there. He lived down the street and was a pretty humorous country kinda guy. He looked at us and said "Wellllll, you know what a redneck would do?" We all just sort of gave him a blank stare. He said "A redneck would go over there, get that front end loader, put the couch in the bucket and lift it over the second story balcony.".

Me, being a nurse of course, was thinking OH NO WAY YOU GUYS!!! I'm thinking someone is going to get killed in this operation. But, my dad and husband were all gung ho about this idea so my dad ran to get the front end loader (what? doesen't everyone have a front end loader sitting around on their property?) and my husband went to go climb out on the first story roof to help get the couch over the balcony. Oh my bob I wish I had some pictures. It was hilarious but the funniest thing was - it worked!!! We didn't even kill anyone in the process which was amazing.

So now, anytime we think of a quirky good idea we say to each other "Wellllll, you know what a redneck would do?". Hence why the bottle opener on the truck reminded me of this story. I figured some guys were out in the woods and all ticked off because they didn't have a bottle opener. I could just hear one guy saying to the other "Wellll, you know what a redneck would do? He'd screw a bottle opener right there to the bumper so he'd always have one.". Another great country thinkin' idea!!

On another note - we are working on our mailing list issues so we will let you know when we have it all straight. My goal is to find a system that makes me use a lot less foul language than google mail lists does. If you did not get a copy of our newsletter via email yesterday you can look at the one on the website HERE.

Wild Release

Liz brought two opossums up with her for release this weekend. She has been rehabbing these little guys for a couple of months now. They are getting big and it's time for them to go find their own homes. I didn't have my camera on me when we released the first one, unfortunately, so I just have pictures of the second little guy getting released. It was so cute to watch him explore his new world for the first time.

BTW - I'm really glad to have these 2 on our property. Did you know that opossums eat poisonous snakes with no problem? That's good to know because we saw that darn Copperhead again yesterday. Wayne saw him REALLY up close and personal (too close for comfort). We tried to catch him but we couldn't. So, maybe a opossum will eat him!

And look at this cute little tree frog that I snapped a picture of. He was having a nap in the corner of our window last week.

Fourth of July Fun

On the 4th we attended the annual Blue Ridge Fouth of July Parade in downtown. As always, it was entertaining. Here are a few of the fun shots:

On Friday there was a spaghetti dinner and live band in the park. Liz and I had some spaghetti.

Then we saw Elvis.

On Saturday morning there was a parade. We saw this guy with a rather large bell.

What country parade is complete without a few big tractors?

And some confederate soldiers (please, no one mention to the folks around these parts that our particular Southern county here actually sided with the Union - they won't hear of it even though it's the truth).

There were some Fannin County Democrats.

The community garden float.

Herbie the Lovebug. He looks pretty good for his age, don't you think?

I bet you didn't know that there are some Hare Krishnas in Blue Ridge, GA, did you? Well there are. 3 to be exact.

Sparky the firefighting dog.

And then this guy. I'm sorry but I have no explanation for this one. I can't even make up anything good. Where does one even buy red fishnet stockings??

And they were doing these little scenic rail cars rides in town. These things must have gone by our house 25 times in the past few days. So, we spent a lot of time waving to the people that were riding. The train hardly ever comes by our house (it goes north to TN from downtown, not south) so it was fun to have the visitors riding by all weekend.

We had a really fun weekend. Sunday was just a relaxation day (I love those!). What did everyone else do for their 4th of July weekend??

New Contest!

I hope everyone is off of work today! Not me. I am still dyeing yarn for the Sock Summit plus I have the club shipments to get done this weekend. I'm sure not complaining though - I can think of A LOT worse ways I could spend my time! I have really enjoyed getting all this stuff ready for the Sock Summit. I have seriously considered packing myself in one of these boxes. If I ship Priority I can be there in 2 days, right?

OK - the contest. Again, this one isn't mine but the prize IS Knit Witch goodies! It's another one of those easy contests so check it out HERE for full details. The prize is 2 skeins of Knit Witch sock yarn and a copy of the new Zodia pattern.

We did notice sort of a small problem with our new pond set up yesterday. Since the little pond has all of those rocks around it now - it isn't nearly as easy to catch the snakes that get in the pond! We found one in the pond last night when we got home from a walk and he scooted right out of the pond and into the rocks and we couldn't get to him. So, I told Wayne we really need to get one of those snake grabby thingies. That will make it easier. I guess we will try again today to catch the little bugger and get him relocated.

As promised, here are a few more flower pictures for you. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend!!!!!

City of Roses

Here is the latest (and last) entry for the Dye for Glory contest - City of Roses.

I must say - I am in love with this color. I think it will be a good choice for an entry into the solids category.

I decided to also add this color in the "out of the box" category. So that makes 6 total entries for Knit Witch.



The dye technique here is a bit unconventional however that song "It's all Been Done" by the Barenaked Ladies keeps running through my head! I'm sure it's nothing new but the technique didn't fit into any of the other categories. I went with Grace's suggestion of Oregon Merlot for this one in honor of the Oregon Wine Country. So, Grace, email me at theknitwitch@gmail.com with your address so I can send out your prize yarn when it is ready. Thanks!! This color is also now for sale on the website HERE.

Many people who have entered have "tagged" their yarn as socksummit so you can go to the yarn page on Rav, type socksummit into the search field and then click on search by tags to see them. Some of the entries are beautiful! I love seeing everyone's interpretation of what they saw fit to send in.

Speaking of flowers, check out some of the flowers that are currently blooming around our pond.

Aren't these pretty?? I'll show you a few more pictures tomorrow.

It has been decided.......

Happy July!!

Thank you all SO MUCH for your help in determining the entries for the Sock Summit contest! Here are the lucky entries. I'll let you know when voting opens.

Portland Rain - Name submitted by Beverly

Brewtopia - Name submitted by Bronwyn

Waters of the Willamette - Name submitted by Sarah

Illumination - Name submitted by Knit Witch!

There is also another one coming. I decided to ditch both of the solids that I had and go with Theresa's suggestion of creating a red. So, that one is drying and I should have a picture for you tomorrow. I must say - thanks so much for that suggestion! I always forget about how much I love red. Mr. Man helped me with the color combination and I dyed it on a 50/50 Suri Alpaca/Merino blend. I love it!

The yarns have been entered into the contest and are for sale HERE on the website. I need to order more stock because I am dyeing everything that I have to send to the Summit so please know that when you order it will be a few weeks for you to get your commemerative Sock Summit Yarn. If you would like some though please do go ahead and order it so that I will know how much yarn to buy and dye for these colors.

I am actually sending a lot more yarn than I thought I would be to the Sock Summit so we are pretty darn excited about that! Speaking of which, I better go get busy getting things inventoried and packed to ship off.